Art exhibitions and policy documents are about to be analysed together for the first time, as researchers examine how contemporary art shapes—and is shaped by—public policy. This matters because policy research has overwhelmingly focused on science and data, ignoring how art can challenge the status quo and offer alternative ways to address social problems. The relationship between art and policymaking remains vastly under-explored, despite artists and exhibitions having long influenced how policymakers interpret and govern societies. If successful, this project will establish the intellectual foundations for a new field—"Art and Public Policy"—by systematically decoding the hybrid spaces where art and policy intersect. The research will examine major international art exhibitions since 1989, trace how the arts mobilise policy change at global and local levels, and explore how art shapes policymakers' values toward more equitable governance. This could transform how governments approach complex social challenges, adding creative, imaginative tools to the policymaker's toolkit alongside traditional evidence and measurement.
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POLART will examine the relationship between art and policy through a double focus: an investigation of how art may produce policy knowledge 'that might be otherwise' (Law 2017) and how, conversely, policy issues have altered the contemporary artistic canon and forms of engagement. Our point of de-parture is that research has so far focused almost exclusively on the role of science and measurement in the production of policy, at the expense of an examination of how art can problematize the status-quo, question well-trodden paths, and offer alternative and imaginative ways of dealing with social problems. Although the relationship between art and policy-making is vastly under-explored, the arts have always been an essential element of how policy makers make sense of, interpret and hence gov-ern societies. POLART's daring promise is to develop interdisciplinary analysis that for the first time investigates the dynamic interrelationship of art and policy systematically. Through innovative methods, and at the crossroads of public policy, science and technology studies and the sociology of art, POLART will set the intellectual foundations of the novel 'Art and Public Policy' field. A major task of the study -and the field - will be the decoding of the material and performative 'hybrid knowing spaces' (Law 2017), as they emerge at the intersections of the art and the policy worlds. How do these aims translate in empirical terms? POLART will initially examine major international art exhibitions, in order to explore the relationship between art and policy problematization post-1989. Second, we will examine how, why and with what effects, the arts can mobilise policy change both at the global and local levels. Finally, we will explore how the arts may shape national/local policy mak-ers' political values towards the production of equitable and participatory governance, fit for the chal-lenges of the 21st century.
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